Xi3 promises details on 'Piston' game console on Monday

Is it time to finally ship the Xi3 Piston game console? The modular computing company on Friday promised that "the wait is over".

Is it time to finally ship the Xi3 Piston game console? The modular computing company on Friday promised that "the wait is over".

On Monday, Sept. 30, at 11 a.m. MT (10 a.m. PT), the Salt Lake City-based company promises "additional details" on the new Piston console, which everyone assumes will be a Steambox or Steam Machine, powered by Valve Software' new SteamOS.

Valve announced a week ago that it would have three announcements lined up in a row: the first was Steam OS, a Linux-based OS that Valve designed for the living room. The second, and most relevant, was the Steam Machine, a Steam OS-powered console that Valve will supply through a variety of partners. And finally, there was the Steam Controller, an oddly-shaped controller that chose to use touchscreens, rather than analog joysticks, as a controller.

So far, Xi3 has never explicitly stated that the Piston would be Steam powered; in fact, the company has previously avoided using Valve's name and the Steam service, even though Valve has invested in the hardware maker.

The Piston prototype Xi3 showed off in January included 12 USB ports, Gigabit Ethernet, two mini-DisplayPort connectors, and an HDMI/DisplayPort combination jack. But the Piston has been up for preorder since March, costing $999 and up: The base configuration includes a 3.2GHz quad-core processor 8GB of RAM, and a 128GB solid state drive. A 256GB solid state drive costs another $340, and a 512GB drive costs $750 extra.

Xi3 isn't saying more on the subject right now. It's also hard to say whether users are really going to be that interested to shell out twice the price of the base Xbox One configuration when the console rolls out, whenever that is. Hopefully those will some of the details that Xi3 spills on Monday.